The Demon Within
by Cliffy G
Summary: Is it truly possible to fight fate? The tale of a diclonius who fights against his destiny is a rare one indeed, but it might just happen...
1. From the Darkness

It was raining in the city centre. No, raining is a poor way to describe the downpour that was flooding roads and clogging the drainpipes. Lightning flashed overhead, followed seconds later by the boom of thunder. In a dark, dank alleyway of the old industrial quarter, a lone figure stood. He wore an old leather jacket over a plain, tattered blue T-shirt. On his head was a battered baseball cap. His trousers had been new once, but now they were as torn and worn as the rest of his clothing. The rain poured off him in rivers, but he didn't seem to notice. His hair, the colour of coal dust, was slick with the water, and his pale face was angled downwards. It was finally time to get it over with.

Slowly, he reached into his jacket pocket and drew out a long, serrated knife, the sort of ones used to shear through bone. With his other hand, he reached up and removed his cap. Barely visible among his jet black curls were two small protrusions of bone. The boy gritted his teeth. He knew what he had to do. He placed the knife against the side of one of the bony plates, hesitated, then started to cut. As soon as he had started, pain exploded into his head, almost making him vomit with its intensity. He pressed harder, feeling the blood streaming down into his hair and down the back of his neck. It was excruciating, but his will prevailed, and the small horn fell to the floor with a clatter.

The boy felt for where the horn had been. When his hand was withdrawn, it was covered in dark red blood. The pain had receded, replaced by the dull throbbing of a bad migraine. He took a long, deep breath, and then began on the other horn. More pain came, and he really did vomit this time. He began to feel weak and disoriented. Why the hell was he doing this in the first place? It would be so much easier to give in. To give to the demon inside him. To tear off his humanity with a bloodcurdling scream and become a killing machine without pity or remorse. But no, that would be running away. That was the easy path. The demon inside him would not claim him, as it had claimed so many of his brothers and sisters.

The second horn was gone now, and the figure slumped down, lying against a nearby dumpster. _Oh, David,_ he thought, _what have you done? You'll probably die of blood loss now. Ah, well, I suppose it would be better that I suffer…than other people…_

Weak from his wounds and tired from his escape from the facility on the island, David crawled underneath the dumpster and fell asleep. Little did he know that his troubles were only beginning…


	2. Baptism by Fire and Pain

David had a fairly normal childhood. He had had a loving family who managed to see past the horns on his head and regarded him as a normal person. Certainly, he was teased and made fun of from time to time at school and so on, but he just shrugged them off as harmless comments. It stayed that way until he was about ten or so. Then, his life was destroyed.

They came for him one cold, lonely winter night. They shot him through both legs and dragged him into the back of a black van with no markings and smoked windows. Then they set fire to his house. His entire family, whom he depended on so much, were completely annihilated. That night, curled up in the back of the van in a pool of his own blood, was the first time _he_ spoke to him. His other half. His shadow.

_He looked like David, except that he was soulless, devoid of any emotion except numbing, biting hate. He spoke._

_"Does it hurt?" He asked. David stared._

_"Does it hurt?" His shadow asked again. David slowly nodded. His shadow smiled, a cold, pitiless slash of white._

_"That's right," His shadow said, "Now tell me. Why does it hurt?"_

_To David, the answer was clear. "They took…everything…" He whispered, crying silently._

_His shadow regarded him for a moment, then said, "Yes. They took everything. But you are not like them, David. You are infinitely superior to these vermin. If you wanted to, you could crush them without even thinking about it." He stopped to see David's reaction._

_David simply stared back at him. His shadow sighed, a shallow, empty breath that reeked of pain and suffering. "This…is too soon. Your hatred is not mature. Soon, you will come to realise the true ugliness of all humanity. But until that time…" He left the sentence hanging, before he turned and vanished into thin air._

---

For the next six years David was incarcerated deep within a secret research lab, although in reality it would be more accurately described as a massive torture chamber. It was here that David learned about his mysterious "talent". He had six vectors in all, making him pretty much average among the diclonius kept in the labs. He knew there were others of his kind there – he could sense them, but he never saw them except for brief periods when they were brought out for experimentation.

The experiments. Daily torture sessions, more like. One time, one of his peers had escaped from his bindings and gone on a massive killing spree, before he was brought down by a high calibre machine gun bullet to the head. David felt envious. He had died and gone to heaven, whilst he and countless others were trapped in hell. His shadow visited him more frequently now, trying to remind him of his suffering and begging him to use his powers to kill. David always refused, biding his time until he could find an opportunity to escape.

But someone else beat him to the punch. It was a normal, pain ridden day in the labs, when, all of a sudden, the lights and computer terminals died. A split second later, red tube lights came on overhead. A faulty fuse had short circuited the system, causing the backup generators to switch on. But there was a massive flaw in the system; everything was now on half power. Including the doors to the diclonius cells. It was only a matter of time until one of the stronger ones managed to pry the doors open.

Only one managed to do it, but one was enough. David was in the cell opposite her. The cell door exploded outwards with great force, partially crushing David's door as it cannoned outwards. She slipped out of the tiny room and ran towards the exit. She was naked, but it didn't matter. Soon she would be clothed in blood.

For the first time, David gave in. He summoned his vectors, effortlessly crushing the partially broken cell door. He turned out of the cell block and into the east wing, where the labs were. Here his attention was distracted by a lab worker, trying desperately to hide under a lab desk. David looked at him. His shadow spoke to him calmly.

"Isn't he pathetic?" He said. David nodded, realising for the first time that he actually was, cowering less than a metre away from him.

"Now…crush him." David calmly obeyed. He slammed all six vectors down on the man's chest, watching it disintegrate into its component parts. It felt…good… David slammed his head against a nearby wall, desperate to get rid of the sensation of killing someone – and feeling good about it.

The previous escapee had taken care of most of the guards, so he could move in relative safety. Eventually he reached the top floor. The wind caught him as he rose out of the stairwell, bringing with it the taste of salt – it was a sea breeze. As he looked around, he realised that he was on an island.

He slumped over. Was this the end? Was his escape really for nothing? He ran to the edge of the land, where the grassy slope fell away and was replaced by a sheer cliff face with the angry, rolling sea at the bottom. He looked back at the facility behind him, then down at the sea. Well, it was better than going back there. David summoned up all his courage, then jumped into the cold, all-cleansing sea.


	3. The Unquiet Shadows

"It's dark in here."

"_Are you scared?"_

"I…do not fear darkness. I was born in darkness, raised in darkness. It is in my being, a part of me. I would feel incomplete without it."

"_Yes. But they do. They fear the darkness. They do not know it, and so they fear it. They seek to control what is not known to them, and when they fail, they try to trample it, suppress it, crush it. It is their nature, inescapable, fundamental."_

"Then they should fear me the most. I lurk in the darkness, hunt in the shadows. Humans are indeed a cowardly race. They try to beat back the darkness with fire, always forgetting that the light leaves many shadows behind."

"_Of course. But you are different. You are special. You are not one of them. You do not fear the darkness, and so you teach them to fear you."_

"Are there…others like me?"

"_Naturally. Cant you feel them? Can you not sense their presence? At the moment there is only one other, but soon there will be many more. And one day, those other weaklings will be culled and we will no longer need to hide in the shadows."_

"I am tired. I want some sleep."

"_Then sleep well, because we have a lot of work to do in ridding the scum from this world."_

It was true; she had a lot of work to do. But for now, the pale skinned, sandy haired diclonius lay down on the floor of the abandoned warehouse she had made her home and slept, dreaming of the perfect world that she was sure would one day come.

* * *

The first thing David felt when he awoke was a sharp pain in his head. He attempted to sit up, but only succeeded in smashing his head against the underside of the dumpster, further increasing his pain. Slowly, he crawled out from underneath the dumpster and slumped against a nearby wall. He slowly reached up and felt his head. It was a miracle he was still alive, and by all rights he knew he should be dead from the massive amount of blood he had lost. A spasm of pain went through his body, causing David to sharply withdraw his hand. He shivered.

It was very cold in the alley, and seemed to act as a natural wind tunnel. Bits of old newspaper were blowing around in tiny cyclones, grimly parodying man's attempts to control nature. One of the pages blew into David's face. He was about to tear it away when the headline caught his eye. It was entitled, "_Serial Killer on the loose!_" He quickly scanned the article, then went back and read it through more carefully. He shivered again, and this time it was not from the cold.

According to the article, an outbreak of killings had occurred relatively nearby. There were nine cases in all, and none of them seemed to be linked – except in the nature of the deaths. All of the bodies had been literally hacked to pieces. But the truly horrifying nature of these killings was that the victims had not been killed by these injuries; rather, they had been left to flail around in their own blood until the darkness took them.

Could it be…that there was another? What exactly happened to the girl who escaped before he did? Before he could ponder the matter any further, he felt a sudden numbness in his head that was impossible to describe. It was strange, like the feeling that you are being watched. And that was when David knew, with a sickening clarity, that he was not the only one.

"I'm not alone…" He said to himself, and shivered once more.


End file.
